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Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "spaventato" in Italian?
spah-vehn-TAH-toh, stress on the third syllable, with a clean nasal "n" and no extra vowel sneaking in around it. In IPA: /spa.venˈta.to/.
Four syllables, spa, ven, ta, and to, evenly spaced, with the third one carrying the stress.
Listen: spaventato
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Sound it out
A regular word to sound out letter by letter, the main thing to get right is where the stress falls, since English cognate instincts don't offer a shortcut here the way they do with some other words.
Hear it in a sentence
Il bambino è spaventato.
The child is scared.
Listen: Il bambino è spaventato.
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"Spaventato" is the adjective from "spaventare" (to scare/frighten), used here with "essere" for a present state: "Il bambino è spaventato" (The child is scared). As with "arrabbiato," it agrees in gender and number with its subject, "il bambino" is masculine singular, so the adjective takes the plain -o ending; a girl would need "spaventata."
Unlike English, which uses the same "scared" for both the passive sense (something scared him) and the resulting state (he is scared), Italian keeps the distinction clearer through verb forms, "il bambino è spaventato" describes his current state, while "qualcosa ha spaventato il bambino" would describe the act of frightening him.
Where English speakers slip
The most common mistake is putting the stress toward the front, saying "SPAH-ven-tah-to" or "spah-VEN-tah-to," borrowing a rhythm closer to how English four-syllable words often land stress. Italian actually stresses the third syllable, "ta," later in the word than most English speakers expect.
The other slip is over-nasalizing the n in "ven," letting it color the vowel before it the way American English nasal vowels work before n. Italian keeps the vowel and the n as two separate, clean sounds, the e in "ven" doesn't pick up any nasal quality from the consonant that follows it.